On the bustling Nevsky Prospect, a wide avenue filled with cafes and clothes shops, the official club store of ice hockey side SKA Saint Petersburg is unmissable courtesy of a giant billboard celebrating the team’s recent championship win.
A little along the road, on the opposite side, sits the official megastore of local football club Zenit. Despite its vast size, it is considerably less noticeable – and in being so offers the perfect metaphor for football in Russia.
Football, not hockey, is played on the streets here. Yet former national team manager Leonid Slutsky said his country lacks football culture.
While temporary branding for Fifa’s Confederations Cup is plentiful across this city of five million, there appears to be little chatter among the population regarding the two-week, eight-team event that kicks off today with the hosts facing Oceanic champions New Zealand.
Residents cite a variety of reasons for not planning to attend matches, including snarling traffic, alleged stadium corruption and general disinterest in a tournament short on star power and often viewed as merely a World Cup dress rehearsal.
Local organisers are also not helped by a Russian squad in a state of rebuild following Slutsky’s resignation last year after a dire European Championships campaign in France.
Although 44,000 tickets have been sold for the curtain-raiser, the Krestovsky Arena boasts a capacity of 68,000, leaving Fifa hoping for a late flurry of sales.
“What we can say is we have sold 480,000 tickets so far for the tournament, which gives us a 65 per cent attendance rate,” said Fatma Samoura, Fifa’s general secretary. “We also know there is a practice here of last-minute purchasing of tickets so we’re still hoping for a full stadium.”
The arena opened earlier this year almost a decade late and at a cost of US$1.7 billion (Dh6.2bn) more than 500 per cent over budget. Yet after just two games, owners Zenit complained about the state of the pitch and insisted on playing their next match at the nearby Petrovsky Arena.
Last night, managers of both Russia and New Zealand allayed fears over the grass, with Kiwis manager Anthony Hudson insisting his side will not be using it as an excuse should they lose.
“Conditions will be same for both teams and I can assure you we have played on much worse in our journey to get here: hard pitches, extreme heat, etc. We are very good at adapting to that kind of thing,” said Hudson, whose team qualified by winning the OFC Nations Cup in Papua New Guinea.
Aside from the Krestovsky field, the traditional scramble to be ready that tends to plague most Fifa host cities has not been apparent, with Alexey Sorokin, the CEO of the local organising committee saying that after six years of preparation, everything is 100 per cent.
Twenty-four hours before kick-off, only a few sponsors’ tents were still being erected outside the stadium.
Organisers’ concern is not the venues then, but what might happen inside and around the structures.
A report compiled by anti-discrimination group Fare and Russia-based Sova said there were 89 racist and far-right incidents at Russian games last season, including one case in which part of a stadium was segregated by a fan group for people of “Slavic appearance”.
Fifa has introduced a new three-step plan designed to stop such discrimination inside the grounds and given referees heightened authority to halt or even abandon matches in the event of unacceptable behaviour. Deputy prime minister Vitaly Mutko conceded racism “is a challenge and responsibility”, but said the government has taken “every possible measure to guarantee safety”.
Such words will be welcomed by fans who witnessed the vicious hooliganism by Russians at last summer’s Euros.
Authorities have already blacklisted around 200 people from attending the event in a bid for it to pass incident-free and improve the country’s reputation ahead of next year’s showpiece. Other welcoming initiatives include the waiving of travel visas for all tournament ticket-holders and free transport between cities.
For the hosts though, the pressure is building. Those walking Nevsky Prospect might not be showing much obvious interest in the Russian team, but their most prominent fan certainly is.
President Vladimir Putin warned his country’s players this week that “fans and those who love Russian football expect better results”, urging them to play “like real warriors”.
Having won only three of their past 15 games, they will have to.
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